


The Beasts in the Corners

by Etnoe



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Science Fiction Elements, Slow To Update
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 11:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5046601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/pseuds/Etnoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Splendid Angharad solves the problem of the king, her husband, with poison. Now she has to solve the problems of his kingdom of slaves and sickness, war on the borders, and feeling as if she has, in fact, finally gained some freedom herself.</p><p>Or, alternate summary: Angharad's here to implement ideals and chew bubblegum, and she's all outta bubblegum.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beasts in the Corners

"The king is dead. Long live the king!"

A day had passed since Joe of the Moors had died, and in that time The Splendid Angharad had spoken when he had always done, stood rituals in his stead, and seated herself on his throne. A full day. And it took that long for people to catch on to the problem with the Kings' Salute.

Citadel's soldier monks lay fattened and content in the smoky warmth of the main hall, and for a moment that went in defiance of the law and custom carried with the salute, and of the greatest love of their lives had ever known, in silence.

And they realised it in collective, too - glancing at each other, staring at nothing in shock, gasping, letting their voices catch in their throats, suddenly uncertain to a one. Of _course_ they did.

A patched cheer finally arose in a toast, but it was not until the Doof Warrior hammered a beat on his table and voiced a furious howl, the War Boys chorusing to his lead, that the response was fitting. They pushed and dared each other with looks to break their massed voice into smaller groups that held different notes. Perhaps it was a blessing that they had realised the problem with the salute - perhaps it had actually taken a short amount of time for that chain link in their minds to fall loose. The feeding frenzy had to be taken into account, too, which had taken over once they had fallen on the hastily prepared food for the funeral feast; it was a rare War Boy who could think past it.

Now they all discovered the unimaginable, always-known facts before them: The Princes would not dare to take the throne - they were known to have been rejected by Joe as successors, trusted though they were as advisor and enforcer. The Splendid Angharad had not been told or asked to accept, or officially sworn to the throne, but she had taken it nonetheless.

She looked as she always had when she still took position in the lesser seat: Hale. Ascendant. Scarred and victorious for it. Wondrously adorned. With pinpoint eyes on every corner of the gathering and ready to wax furious wroth should some mysterious thing - no one could surely say what! - finally displease her beyond her capacity to bear it in her great grace. It could not be quite right that she had taken the position of ruler, but anyone to speak against her would be a traitor to be shredded. Joe of the Moors would have dealt ignominious death to those who insulted the Queen.

It was an attitude that Angharad couldn't depend on to last. War Boys were one thing. Imperators knew enough to be another thing entirely. She turned to the Wise Prince, Corpus Colossus, who had been seated at the royal table beside her while his brother sat duty by their father's corpse. 

Under her breath, she opened with, "How do you escape the assassinations?"

"Dad," Corpus said. "He kept me alive to start with, and I figure he did it long enough that I'm more magic than monster if you go asking round. Add bodyguards and I squeak by."

"How much magic is there, really?" Angharad said. She didn't think he'd answer that one, despite how much she needed the information, but at the very least now he knew that he _would_ have to answer at some point, and it was best that he get used to the idea. "Not only in you, or in the lies he told about you. He's hidden more."

"Might be in there," he said with a beaming grin as he nodded at the swell of her belly, but despite the motivation of scores of eyes on them, he couldn't keep the pleasant façade up. Sweat broke out over his cheeks in an attack of nerves and he patted at his face with the fine wraps that lined his specially-made seat. "You'll want to keep that one. My half-sib. No more poisons or you'd be doing away with more certainty for your life than any number of bodyguards will give."

"I know. They're all convinced already this is his rebirth." Her slippers bore dark blots of tears from the higher-ranking War Boys as they had gathered courage to crawl to her, making offerings of meat and marrow bones and sweet nuts to ameliorate their presence, and prayed for their king and what was left of him in this world.

"Might wanna come up with a name. This lot's gonna get to that fast. Make it two names, so you can keep one between the two of you and no worrying what anyone else says about it."

Angharad stared in shock. She had only forced herself to get as far as thinking up a few potential names and titles for the child so that it would be something she could stand. To think of the child as something that would be itself - him, her, or otherwise - someone to have a relationship with, not only a being that would exist in a better capacity in the society she wanted to have... The simple, entirely obvious thought felt like a blow.

Corpus stared back with the kind of fear that had him try to pretend he hadn't rattled her. Somehow he seemed to think the next was a less loaded topic: "How'd you manage not assassinating yourself, o Splendid? Or the kid."

That was a subject she was prepared for, and it wasn't worth even a nervous twitch. If he had a way to make record of her voice he could easily use a confession against her. Instead she let her gaze sweep the hall again.

Beside her, Corpus muttered. "Walked in the garden for years. Found a poison plant, ate bits, built up resistance-" he made a dubious noise "- _could've_ passed it to the baby, cooked something for Dad with enough poison to kill him but not you..." A sigh, with no relief in the sound. "I like to know I'm right, is all. Using any of that against you doesn't look too smart as things stand." She studied him now to assess his sincerity; he looked ahead of him at nothing. "Told him you'd send him underground sooner than look at him. Now I know I'm right there, at any rate."

Corpus Colossus would miss his father in some capacity, she could see, but she believed he was all too aware of what Joe had been.

He lay back a moment against his cushions, searching the smoke and roof beams. Perhaps some secrets were kept there. "All this conversation mean you're keeping me around?"

"If necessary," said Angharad, looking him in the eye. He looked subserviently down on the instant and nodded, adding a perfunctory whine.

Angharad turned at last to her food. Her strength and health ensured her position as much as anything did, and the baby made a great many demands of her body.

"The king is dead!" someone said with the bright fervour of a bright idea, voice rising through the clamour that rolled among the War Boys as they crammed in a few more bites of food and each other. "Long live the _queen_!"

"I'm certainly planning on it," Angharad announced, rising hastily to her feet and raising her arms in salute, and thought that Corpus really ought to have tried to control his sputtering better. At least the yips and howls of the War Boys covered it up.

*

It was fitting enough to have a quartermaster attend a princess in her rooms, but how should a princess go about showing a quartermaster that she was truly welcomed? Cheedo kicked her shoes off, inspired, to take away one thing that marked them as too different. Not too many jewels, light some candles, stand by the long bench so she knows exactly what to do the second she enters the room - that should work.

"Kitchen Quartermaster," she said imperiously as she waved the guards out who let the woman in, and allowed herself to give the ridiculous grin that rose and fell as she kept cycling through excitement, relief, disbelief, hope ... almost too many feelings to take. She perched on the edge of the bench, plumping pillows so the woman wouldn't think she had to sit on the wood in accordance with royal example or anything.

"Toast," the quartermaster said, and returned the smile. Just a corner. The mild reticence terrified Cheedo for a second, but no, she looked sincere. And Splendid said this was a good plan. Splendid had taken Cheedo's hands gently, and given her everything, and she'd also said this was good.

"So I can hide here, if I need to?" Toast sat.

"You don't even have to let me know! We probably ought to come up with a reason at first, for anyone who's suspicious, but after that it can just be assumed that we've become close." Cheedo looked down, nervous. "I think that wouldn't be too bad, if it happened."

"How did the Queen convince you?"

Her grin came out again at the thought of Angharad. "They always said she was jealous of me, did you know? Because the King might take me for himself instead of for Rictus. And there's all the protection the King gave her, cloths, spells, all this stuff that hurt... I heard he was dead, and I didn't know how to survive to sunrise, and then... She came to me and said that I can stay, I'm safe. That now I have an ally. She said that now _she_ did, in me, like it could be equal between us." Cheedo looked up from weaving her fingers together and pulling the knobbled web apart. "And that you're on our side, too."

"You teach a girl how to cook a couple of tasty, filling poison stews, and look what it gets you," said Toast with a sardonic look around the room, and then darted to her feet as Cheedo stared at her. "You didn't _know_?"

"I can't believe you-- _Joe_. That you just..." 

"Did what should have been done long ago."

"And you _told me_!" Cheedo hissed, so astonished she was outraged. "How can you not keep that secret?"

Her expression closed off but she smiled all the same. "If you're losing it like this I'm assuming you're definitely going to keep your mouth shut."

"Of course!"

Toast sat again. "Are you going to ask to be shipped back home, Princess? That would sure facilitate the secret-keeping."

Cheedo's face flooded hot and she drew herself high. "I would be a shame to them all - taking one step with the intention of going back where I came from. Don't even say that again."

Again, Toast took the anger as if it were still friendly. "Tell me more," she said with eagerness. "About how that stuff works in your land."

They spoke for a long while of her people's customs. It was soothing in familiarity and Cheedo began to calm properly for the first time since the news that Joe of the Moors was gone for good. Then Toast said in the easy tones they'd fallen into, "Did the Queen tell you when the first sacrifice is going to be?"

It was not a bad trick, but she shouldn't have bothered. This was something Cheedo was brimming to tell, and it certainly wasn't the kind of thing that could be a secret very long: "She told me who, too. Never, and no one - that's what she said!

Toast was sarcastic about it, but Cheedo was fast learning to disregard that from her. Besides, she was impressed, too.

Cheedo had wept with relief when Angharad told her that so plainly and surely, and almost cried again now. When she could slip away and finally tell the person who most needed to know, she could tell that she burst into tears again, but she hardly minded the thought. The prisoner wouldn't think less of her for that. Not for the miraculous fact of both of them having more allies. Surely, _both_ of them now had these allies - Toast, clever and unbelievably tough, and the Splendid Queen herself?


End file.
